Leaving
by accio.awesomeness
Summary: "Don't leave me." "You stupid girl, I'm not going anywhere." Set after PG, Bartimaeus gets a visit from Nathaniel. Kitty is suffering and needs him. But djinn can't fall for humans... right? A serious change of ideals ensues. Oneshot.


**Hey guys. Something new, a Bartimaeus fanfic! I love that djinni. :) Anyone who reviews gets a guaranteed R&R. Don't think you can get away with just favouriting, because I will accept nothing but a review. **

**Disclaimer: Yeah, yeah. Everything you recognise owned by Jonathan Stroud. Blah blah. Blah. You know the drill.**

* * *

I was snoozing pretty peacefully when Nathaniel interrupted me. His appearance woke me up pretty damn fast, considering the last time I'd seen him he'd been about to die a noble death. I had seen him! Watched as the deadly rays of power arced out, making the building collapse and vanquish Nouda. Of course, the power of the trapped spirits combined with the hundred (or more) tonne weight of the Glass Palace effectively killed off Nathaniel, too.

In normal circumstances, I would have whooped and cried, "Two birds with one stone!" But curse my luck, I'd gone and formed a bond with the boy. It had been formed somewhere in the middle of him almost killing me and me sharing his body. Bonding in a literal sense. But yes, I had been quite sorry to see him go.

And then, while I was peacefully floating around in the shape of a pink peacock (long story… remind me to tell you later), the dratted boy appeared and yelled in my ear.

"BARTIMAEUS!"

"Whoa!" I was so shocked, I lost my shape and turned into a floating pink blob.

"Stop messing around, this is important," he snapped, the impatient tones so familiar to me that I felt a tiny pang somewhere deep inside the pink blob.

"Erm… I don't really know how to phrase this properly, but how the _hell_ are you here? Aren't you supposed to be dead?"

"I _am_ dead. Don't ask stupid questions. Now, as to why I'm here…" he paused as he gathered his thoughts. I took the time to survey him more closely. He _did_ look a bit healthier than he had done in life. And happier. "Kitty needs you. She's having a pretty tough time back on Earth."

I waited. "Aaaand?" I prompted when he showed no signs of continuing. A pair of eyes appeared on the blob, one of them slightly raised.

"Do you know how to get to Earth without being summoned?" he asked suddenly, still not answering. I frowned. Or rather, the black eyebrows on the blob drew together.

"I supposed I could, but I've never really tried. What are you – " I cut myself off as I realised what he was getting at. "Erm… not happening, Nat. She wants _you_, not me. I'd just be… what? A painful reminder?

"She's _suffering_, Bartimaeus. She cries herself to sleep most nights!"

I couldn't help it; worry instantly took over, aching inside me. An ache to go see her, comfort her. There are some experiences that just form an irreversible bond between two people and Kitty coming to the Other Place for me was one such experience. I would do anything for the girl.

I felt my mouth moving at the word spilling out before I could stop it. "Fine."

"Great," he replied without missing a beat. "Do you need help getting there?"

I tossed him a contemptuous look. "Please."

"Listen to me, Bartimaeus," he said seriously, coming closer and gripping the blob very tightly. "You have to do whatever it take to get hr happy again. _Do you understand?_"

Despite the fact that he was no longer my master and never again would be, I felt the need to obey. I _wanted _to. It was something I had termed 'The Ptolemy Bond'.

"I got it, I got it!" I said, swelling slightly in size so that he could see that I was serious. "Take care, Nathaniel. I'll give Kitty your love, shall I?" I waited for the his of 'Shut up, someone could hear!', but it never came. I had to remember that he was dead and his birth name would never hard him again. "Nat?" I prompted; he was staring off into a vortex a hundred metres away.

"Hmm?" he asked absently.

"Shall I give Kitty your love?" I repeated.

"Yes, do that," he said, some unidentifiable emotion in his tone and eyes. He hesitated before adding, "And tell her… tell her I'll be waiting." He stepped back, surveying my blob in all its pink glory. I changed into Ptolemy. "Take care, Bartimaeus. Remember what I told you." He sounded about a hundred years old and I felt a pang of sadness. He had been so young. Too young to die.

"ANYTHING to make her happy again" I repeated obediently. With a quick salute, I threw myself backwards and down, down, down until the elements buffeted me one by one and I could see Earth looming closer. And finally, with a thump, I landed in someone's study. Sparsely decorated, with just a desk and a couple of chairs in it. I crept to the desk and took a peek at some of the papers.

_A Theory of Djinn, _by Kathleen Jones.

_John Mandrake: The Man Behind The Mask_, by Kathleen Jones.

I paused in my rifling. Kathleen Jones? Kathleen… Kitty. Kitty Jones. Kitty!

And then who should walk in but Kitty herself, her hair black again and all the wrinkles gone. She didn't see me at first, so I tentatively stepped forward. "Kitty?"

She whipped around, shock evident on her face. And then she saw me and a small cry of pain burst from her lips. She sank to the floor, shoulders shaking with silent sobs. Despite the shining hair and young face, she looked old beyond her years in the almost tangible grief she carried around with her. Not sure what to do, I stood in the corner for a minute.

"So I'm seeing things now?" she suddenly screamed up at the sky. "_Why do you torture me so?_" The last sentence was an almost inhuman scream and it almost brought me to my knees in its pain. It spurred me into action and I jumped across the room, one arm curling across her back and the other trying to wipe the tears from her face.

"Kitty, I'm not an illusion. I brought myself here, for you." I said it softly, so as not to alarm her. She didn't look particularly stable..

"That's what every illusion says," she sniffed.

"Do you meet many, then?" I asked interestedly. She shot me a look that promised a painful death and straightened up, brushing tears off her face.

"Only Bartimaeus would say something like that," she said as she got a good look at me. Her eyes welled with fresh tears and she ran for me, pulling me into a rib cracking hug. I stroked her hair uncertainly.

"Oh, Kitty," I murmured. What has happened to you?" And I held her until her sobs died out.

* * *

I stayed with her as she ran her errands, always staying close, hovering in an unobtrusive form.

"So, Kitty," I asked as she fixed dinner for herself. "What's been going on here?"

"New government, made of magicians and civilians alike. I've been travelling quite a bit these past few months, too. Went to Brazil, USA, China… Egypt," she said the last one reluctantly. "I was probably searching for something that connected me to you. Stir that," she added. I took the spoon and started stirring the sauce in the pan as she grabbed some marinated chicken from a box. I didn't say anything, thinking about her words.

_Probably searching for something that connected me to you._ Who had she mourned more, me or Nathaniel? I watched her as she ate and then she disappeared into the bathroom to change. She emerged in a pair of flannel pyjamas and I followed her into her room as she crawled between the sheets.

"Stay. Please?" she asked softly, snuggling down between the covers. How could I say no to a face like that?

"I'm not going anywhere, Kitty," I said quietly, flopping into an armchair and picking up a book. Her breathing soon quieted and settled into a steady rhythm and I smile. _No crying tonight, Nat_, I thought, wishing he could hear me.

* * *

"Good morning," I said pleasantly as Kitty rolled over and stretched. Pausing in the middle of a stretch, she sat bolt upright. She gawped at me for a moment and pinched herself.

"Oh my _God_," she said breathlessly. "I thought you were a dream!"

"Oh, so _that's_ why your reaction to me was mellower than I expected," I exclaimed, the lightbulb flashing.

"That was _mellow_?"

"It's still mellow. Someone you thought was dead showed up in your study. Wouldn't that just be a _little_ freaky?"

"I… guess so. I thought you were a dream, remember?"

"And now? Why are you not screaming and ringing up the asylum people?"

"Because it's not a dream, and I'm too happy to see you to go to an asylum. Now shut up and make me breakfast," she ordered. I did as she complied. Rather than making it, however, I stole some pancakes from a shop down the road. She was still sitting in bed, staring into space with a blank expression. I'd noticed her doing that a lot, and it worried me.

"You know how to make pancakes?" she asked incredulously.

"Erm… not exactly." I gulped and she pinned me with a hard stare.

* * *

I suppose the tears and nightmares couldn't have held off for long. Somewhere around one in the morning, Kitty awoke with a gasp and started crying abruptly. "Gone… he's gone…" she was crying, and I hastened to her side.

"Kitty? _Kitty!_" I shook her gently until she focused on me. She gasped again and threw herself on me, hugging me until I couldn't breathe.

"I thought… you were gone!" she blubbered, still holding fast. My knees were beginning to hurt from the position on the floor. I gently prised open her arms and cradled her face.

"I'm not going anywhere. I might need to go to the Other Place to recuperate every now and then, but only for a short time. Maybe fifteen minutes on Earth." I paused to look her in the eye again so that she couldn't doubt my sincerity. "_I'm not leaving. _Get that through your head and the nightmares will stop." I stroked her hair back from her damp face as she nodded. She pulled at her collar restlessly and I tucked her in again before I opened a window. The wind rushed in, cooling her heated face and she soon sank back into a peaceful sleep.

* * *

For the next few months, I stayed with Kitty in Ptolemy's form, except when I needed to accompany her out, in which case I became a bird or insect of some sort, always close by.

I had started out by sleeping in her living room, on the sofa, but found myself running to her room every night as she screamed from the nightmares. I had often wondered what scared her so, but never dared to ask. In any case, I thought it would just be easier to stay in the same room and took to kipping on the armchair in the form of a cat. A giant, grey, Egyptian cat of the variety that was now extinct, but a cat all the same.

Every day, generally while Kitty was in the shower (she took half hour baths, the indulgent thing), I escaped to the Other Place for fifteen minutes or so to rest up in its healing maelstrom, but made sure to return in fifteen minutes in case Kitty decided to cut her bath short.

It bothered me, really. How much I cared for Kitty. I mean, obviously, apart from the whole jump-into-a-pit-of-acid-'cause-you-came-to-the-Other-Place thing, there was something else. A nagging ache when I accidently passed fifteen minutes, a shaking need to make her happy, no matter the cost. And when she woke up crying in the night, why did _I _feel like my heart was breaking?

Djinn don't have feelings for humans.

"Bartimaeus," Kitty said while she was eating dinner one day. I looked up from the newspaper. "Do you want to know what I dream about that scares me so?" she asked abruptly.

Yes, I very much did, and I told her so. I wanted to tackle it like I'd lead a siege on a fort. Know the enemy first and then figure out the best way to take it down. In this case, the enemy being the people in Kitty's dreams.

This brought back an uncomfortable feeling. I still had not passed on Nathaniel's message to Kitty. I had been scared that she would have a meltdown after hearing it. Or worse, try and kill herself so she could get there – wherever "there" was – faster.

"I dream about people leaving me. It's always the same dream, same location, same everything. Just different people."

"Like who?" I prompted softly. She looked down at her plate, spooning up a mouthful of carrots.

"Nathaniel. Mr Button. My parents – they were killed by renegade djinn. Jacob." She paused, blushing. This intrigued me; Kitty never blushed. "The one I dream about most often – the one which hurts the most – is you. All of the people I dream about leave me standing in the ruins of the Glass Palace and I can't reach them, but they reach out to me. You never looked back."

"Oh, Kitty," I breathed. I reached across the table to touch her hand and she held fast, grabbing onto my hand like it was a lifeline.

"Every time I have that dream, which is almost every night now, waking up and finding you there is the only thing that can calm me down. Before you were here, I used to scream myself awake and then cry into a pillow until I fell asleep again." Her brown eyes bored deep into mine. "Don't leave me, Bartimaeus. Everyone else has."

I smiled slightly, my thumb caressing her cheek. "You stupid girl. How many times do I have to tell you that I'm not going anywhere?"

She smiled in response and I pushed some hair back behind her ears.

"But Kitty," I said seriously. It was now or never. "I need to know. Was it me? Or was it Nathaniel?" She looked up, confused, but then she saw my eyes and she caught my meaning.

She took a long time to answer, swirling some pasta around her fork meditatively. Seconds stretched into minutes and my patience was starting to waver. It was probably a record for me to have even stayed silent this long. "At first," she began, "I thought it was Nathaniel." My heart sunk immediately, but I reminded it that she had said 'at first'. "And then," she continued, "I remembered the day we trapped you in that alley and you snapped at me with that crocodile head. How you used every trick to get our of our hands. How cunning and clever you were. And then a few years later, you gave me some priceless information about governments and rebellions and I remember how it lit a fire in me – a fire that had been missing since a different djinni killed my friends. And you deliberately disobeyed Nathaniel's orders to kill me if I ran, to save me." She stood, and I followed her into the sitting room.

"And finally, I remember how you had used Nouda's wish to spare our lives. How you gently welcomed me into the Other Place. How you agreed to share Nathaniel's body despite the danger. And I remembered how much it hurt when I thought I'd never be able to speak to you again, never watch you cross your legs Egyptian style, never hear you insult Nathaniel again. It made me realise – while I did love Nathaniel, there's no point in retaining such a feeling now. You are my present and hopefully, my future, Bartimaeus." She was very close to my face, so close. But I couldn't let her, not before telling her what I had to.

"Wait. Kitty. There's something you need to know." She pulled away, looking a bit hurt, but hid it behind a composed mask. I wondered when she had developed that, since she had always been very vocal about her feelings before the war.

"Nathaniel, he's the one who told me to come here. Don't ask questions yet," I added as she opened her mouth. "He appeared to me while I was in the Other Place and told me you needed me. I argued at first, told him I would only be a painful reminder of the past – but I gave in. I wanted to see you so badly. And he told me –" I took a deep breath. "He told me to give you his love. And to tell you that – that he'll be waiting." Her eyes welled with tears again but she pushed them back impatiently.

She took a deep breath before saying the words that would make my day. No – make the rest of my life. "It doesn't change anything. He's gone, you're here. I love _you_, Bartimaeus. And I know you think that djinni-human relationships are unheard-of, but if you'll have me, I'd like to try."

In one step, I was right in front of her. "Like I said – I'm not going anywhere. You have just made me the happiest djinni alive, Kitty Jones. I would be honoured to do this with you." It came a bit more formal-sounding than I'd intended it to, but her eyes shone. Before I could think, I leaned down on impulse and kissed her.

Now, djinn don't reproduce. New djinn are just… formed. Out of whatever, the essence of the Other Place or something. So I had never kissed anyone or anything before. But I soon realised, after a few moments of Kitty's lips on mine, that I had missed out on a lot.

She broke away and whispered something in my ear. I leaned closer and asked her to repeat it. "But what will happen when I grow old?" she whispered sadly.

"I'll grow old with you," I declared, changing my hair to white and adding a couple of wrinkles.

She laughed at my antics, leaning up to kiss me again. And I knew that I had made the right decision. Eventually, Kitty would grow old and die. But there were many years until then – and I planned to make the most of them.

_Maybe djinn _can_ have feelings for humans._

* * *

**Again, R&R, loves. Imagine that I'll give you a cookie, if that helps. A Famous Amos cookie. For those who have never tried Famous Amos, I'm telling you, it is THE SHIT. Like, the bestest of the best of cookies. xoxo Tara**


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